The storekeeper soon ordered two dozen, a supply unheard of in his previous business career. A New York dealer in tools came to the village to sell his wares, and bought all the storekeeper had, and left a standing order for all the blacksmith could make. David might have grown very wealthy by making goods of the standard already attained; but throughout his long and successful life he never ceased to study still further to perfect his hammers in the minutest detail. They were usually sold without any warrant of excellence, the word "Maydole" stamped on the head being universally considered a guaranty of the best article the world could produce.
Character is power, and is the best advertisement in the world.
"We have no secret," said the manager of an iron works employing thousands of men. "We always try to beat our last batch of rails. That is all the secret we've got, and we don't care who knows it."
"I don't try to see how cheap a machine I can produce, but how good a machine," said the late John C. Whitin, of Northbridge, Mass., to a customer who complained of the high price of some cotton machinery. Business men soon learned what this meant; and when there was occasion to advertise any machinery for sale, New England cotton manufacturers were accustomed to state the number of years it had been in use and add, as an all-sufficient guaranty of Northbridge products, "Whitin make."
"Madam," said the sculptor H. K. Brown, as he admired a statue in alabaster made by a youth in his teens, "this boy has something in him." It was the figure of an Irishman who worked for the Ward family in Brooklyn years ago, and gave with minutest fidelity not merely the man's features and expression, but even the patches in his trousers, the rent in his coat, and the creases in his narrow-brimmed stove-pipe hat. Mr. Brown saw the statue at the house of a lady living at Newburgh-on-the-Hudson. Six years later he invited her brother, J. Q. A. Ward, to become a pupil in his studio. To-day the name of Ward is that of the most prosperous of all Americans sculptors.
"Paint me just as I am, warts and all," said Oliver Cromwell to the artist who, thinking to please the great man, had omitted a mole.
"I can remember when you blacked my father's shoes," said one member of the House of Commons to another in the heat of debate. "True enough," was the prompt reply, "but did I not black them well?"
"It is easy to tell good indigo," said an old lady. "Just take a lump and put it into water, and if it is good, it will either sink or swim, I am not sure which; but never mind, you can try it for yourself."
John B. Gough told of a colored preacher who, wishing his congregation to fresco the recess back of the pulpit, suddenly closed his Bible and said, "There, my bredren, de Gospel will not be dispensed with any more from dis pulpit till de collection am sufficient to fricassee dis abscess."
When troubled with deafness, Wellington consulted a celebrated physician, who put strong caustic into his ear, causing an inflammation which threatened his life. The doctor apologized, expressed great regrets, and said that the blunder would ruin him. "No," said Wellington, "I will never mention it." "But you will allow me to attend you, so that people will not withdraw their confidence?" "No," said the Iron Duke, "that would be lying."